Wednesday, October 5, 2011

A Sensible Viewpoint from the Political Right

Two things...

First,Bruce Bartlett is an old Reaganite Republican who has woken up to the dysfunction in American politics and understands the current economic mess. Here is gives sensible answers despite media types trying to create sound bites and phony "issues":

Notice that he distinguishes on entitlements: Medicare spending is out of control, but Social Security is not a problem despite what the right wing fanatics who want to kill the program are saying.

Bartlett does an excellent job of fending off the idiocies that the "journalists" throw at him. I'm quite happy with what Bartlett is saying. I especially love the bit at 10:35 when he says Bush was "buying votes" with Medicare Part D and that "they are all damn liars" because people like Ryan voted for Medicare Part D but now is on a high horse about deficits and debt.

Second, Here is a list of things that George W. Bush speech-writer David Frum identifies as errors in Republican thinking (from here):

On the most urgent economic issue of the day – recovery from the Great Recession – the Republican consensus is seriously wrong.

It is wrong in its call for monetary tightening.

It is wrong to demand immediate debt reduction rather than wait until after the economy recovers.

It is wrong to deny that “we have a revenue problem.”

It is wrong in worrying too much about (non-existent) inflation and disregarding the (very real) threat of a second slump into recession and deflation.

It is wrong to blame government regulation and (as yet unimposed) tax increases for the severity of the recession.

It is wrong to oppose job-creating infrastructure programs.

It is wrong to hesitate to provide unemployment insurance, food stamps, and other forms of income maintenance to the unemployed.

It is wrong to fetishize the exchange value of the dollar against other currencies.

It is wrong to believe that cuts in marginal tax rates will suffice to generate job growth in today’s circumstance.

It is wrong to blame minor and marginal government policies like the Community Reinvestment Act for the financial crisis while ignoring the much more important role of government inaction to police overall levels of leverage within the financial system.

It is wrong to dismiss the Euro crisis as something remote from American concerns.

It is wrong to resist US cooperation with European authorities in organizing a work-out of the debt problems of the Eurozone countries.

It is wrong above all in its dangerous combination of apocalyptic pessimism about the long-term future of the country with aloof indifference to unemployment.

Conclusion... more people on the right need to rebel. They need to say "enough!" Stop the obstructionist politics and get down to business to solve America's problems.